Abandoning Elimination
On Monday, the government announced (without saying it in so many words) that New Zealand is abandoning our long held elimination strategy for covid. And absolutely no one is happy. Myself included. Starting Tuesday at midnight, restrictions eased despite the persistent number of daily cases and continuous unlinked cases that mean there are unknown transmissions avenues. The restrictions aren’t easing much, and in reality it is just legitimising what is already going on as there are already small groups congregating outside even though we’re all supposed to stay in our bubbles. We’re technically still in level 3, so no dining in restaurants, no shopping in stores, and no school for (most) kids. Instead we get the restrictions of a lockdown with the added stress of knowing that at the end of all of this, covid is going to be in our communities. One Stuff article put it best when it said that “Monday’s Covid announcement was really the political equivalent of ‘I survived lockdown and all I got was this T-shirt’.”
The people who wanted to stick with an elimination strategy (myself included) would’ve preferred to see strict level 4 restrictions reimposed because the numbers in level 3 were heading in the wrong direction. The people who wanted to throw in the towel and open everything up (or at least a lot of things up) are unhappy because that isn’t happening either. Generally, New Zealand is aiming for a 90% vaccination rate (we’re currently around 49% fully vaccinated and 78% with one shot for the country overall. In Auckland, those numbers are a few percentage points higher) and supposedly when we hit that magical 90% number, life will be back to normal. Though I’m not sure if that means 90% fully vaccinated or 90% with one vaccine. That part’s never been clear. In the meantime, we’re stuck in purgatory - which will be reviewed weekly - and if there’s anything I’ve learned from watching the US’s covid response, it is that purgatory is terrible for everyone involved.
I’m especially disappointed because I think everyone expected New Zealand to hold onto the elimination strategy until their were vaccines for kids available. We’ve had numerous outbreaks from school exposures and in the current delta outbreak at the time of my writing, 245 (17.7%) are under 9 and 303 (21.9%) are between 10 and 19 - meaning some under 12s who can’t be vaccinated yet. Young kids are making up a huge portion of this outbreak. To make things even worse, the Ministry of Education isn’t mandating vaccines or testing for teachers and says parents shouldn’t ask if their teacher’s are vaccinated or not. This makes my blood boil. I’ll be asking anyone we might come in contact with for any length of time what their vaccination status is, if they have any symptoms, and if they’ve had to take a covid test recently. There’s no way I would let someone who is going to spend hours indoors with my young, unvaccinated kids to decline to give some sort of reassurances about their likelihood of spreading covid. It reminds me of the gun questions you had to ask back in Texas before sending your kids over to play. (If you’re unfamiliar with the gun questions, consider yourself lucky!) There is a small backlash growing against this policy and it sounds like the powers that be might move towards teacher mandates, but considering schools is supposed to start back up in a week and a half, there’s no time to get unvaccinated teachers two doses plus time for immunity to kick in.
Though I know I’m not likely to get a serious case of covid (thanks, vaccines!) I’m still going to have to do a constant risk assessment now that covid is out in the community, and that is something that I’m just pissed off about. I realize most of the world has moved past that point in the pandemic, but I haven’t. That mental load is draining regardless of my vaccine status, and I don’t think that price is factored into many people’s “pandemic math” when they weigh the pros and cons of elimination vs. living with it.
So for all of the people around the world who have been living with covid for the past 18 months, what sort of things did you plan for? Did you have a backup plan if both parents got sick? Did you have a plan if one child got sick but the other wasn’t sick yet? What should I have on hand if/when someone in our family gets sick? Tell me all the things I need to know that I’ve been happily unencumbered with this year and a half.
